Critics reviews

As with Jaws, men especially could experience both the pleasure and the terror of an unmanning. Denied that particular catharsis I felt artery-clogged by the long good-bye, which creates a sort of stasis, affirming the superiority of the child's unfettered imagination over the limited and spiritually downtrodden adult.

Though the film tantrically stretches the good vibrations of the finale to Close Encounters of the Third Kind into a feature-length soul hug, the still waters of E.T.—which, on the surface, seems unquestionably the smallest scale, most humble film to ever ascend to the apex of all-time top-grossing films—run surprisingly deep.

Already well-established as one of the most powerful visual storytellers around, he works E.T.'s story for all it's worth, taking his characters to the outer reaches of slapstick and pathos without losing his grip. Occasionally he leans on the levers too hard, but only a hardened curmudgeon could fail to respond.

In the strange and beautiful love story of ET lies the genesis of Douglas Coupland’s vision of Generation X: people in the west growing up in a secular, affectless society, yearning to feel rapture, and looking for love in the ruins of faith.

"E.T." remains the most fluid movie Spielberg has ever made. It moves forward not on the pop propulsion that powered his previous films but on the waves of its own enchantment. In both tone and execution it's about as pure as a commercial movie can be.

It is filled with innocence, hope, and good cheer. It is also wickedly funny and exciting as hell. "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" is a movie like "The Wizard of Oz," that you can grow up with and grow old with, and it won't let you down.

As already hinted at by the quasi-religious vibrations given off by Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Spielberg would seem to be groping towards a virtual theology of space, space as Heaven, offering solace to a world which has foolishly renounced its traditional God but still aches to extend its own spiritual frontiers.

E.T... comes to a beleaguered industry like a gift from the gods. Not only does it get bums on seats but it encourages the kind of shared enjoyment that suggests the cinema still has something unique to offer.

Beautiful, hair-raising, and very gently, very touchingly funny, E.T. is a children's movie in that it is about the children around us and speaks to what is freshest inside us.

''E.T. the Extra-Terrestial,''... may become a children's classic of the space age... ''E.T.'' is as contemporary as laser-beam technology, but it's full of the timeless longings expressed in children's literature of all eras.

"E.T." is essentially a spiritual autobiography, a portrait of the filmmaker as a typical suburban kid set apart by an uncommonly fervent, mystical imagination. It comes out disarmingly funny, spontaneous, bighearted.

Rarely has a picture so completely evinced a kid’s p.o.v. and shown the complicity of youngsters against adults. It’s been said that the only people who don’t like Disneyland are late adolescents who feel too hip to enjoy the pleasures of their earlier years, and the same will probably hold true for “E.T.”